| This building at 1200 Lake Cook Rd. didn't look much like a synagogue before Finegold Alexander and Associates got ahold of it two years ago. With the help of the congregation of B'Nai Jehoshua Beth Elohim and Krusinski Construction, the single-story plaza in Deerfield was converted from a semi-vacant office to a synagogue. As the congregation found more of its members living in Deerfield than its previous location in Glenview, it started looking for a new space, but found few tracts of land large enough to support their 1,200-plus members. The 80k SF complex is about two-thirds complete and hosted the first half of the high holidays for Rosh Hashanah last week. | |
| FAA's Maurice Finegold and Tony Hsiao said they wanted to incorporate a lot of light into the rehabbed building, as well as keep some old elements intact for sustainability and to give a sense of the past. The new synagogue includes a common area that can easily host a wedding as small as 200 people to a 1200-person holy day service. Maurice says this is one of the first offices that has been converted to a place of worship in the country, but he expects to see more as religious institutions look for sustainable and economic ways to relocate when they outgrow their existing space. Not one to miss an opportunity, we hear publishers are updating The Bible, changing Moses' occupation from shepherd to receptionist. |
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